A year on from Lion Air crash, Indonesians pray, scatter petals for victims

One year after a Lion Air plane crash that killed 189, relatives and friends of victims held prayer vigils and cast flower petals into the Java Sea at the site where the carrier’s Boeing 737 MAX jet went down. The almost new Boeing aircraft had been flying from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta to the town of Pangkal Pinang, on the Bangka-Belitung islands off Sumatra, when it crashed within minutes of take-off. “This cannot be forgotten because it was such a tragic and unbelievable event,” said Epi Samsul Komar, whose 24-year-old son, Muhammad Rafi Andrian, was on the doomed flight, JT610. ”Hopefully this flower-scattering ceremony can heal our longing for our child,” Komar said. He was among the families of victims who went by boat to the crash site off the West Java district of Karawang to throw petals into the sea, a tribute they also performed last Nov. 8. Tuesday’s event came days after Indonesian investigators issued their final report on the disaster, setting out Boeing’s failure to identify risks in the design of cockpit software and recommending better training for Lion Air’s pilots. Stan Deal, newly appointed president and CE of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, attended the ceremony in Jakarta, at which he said he was there to pay his respects. Deal’s predecessor, Kevin McAllister, was ousted by Boeing last week, the first high-level departure since the two crashes. In the town of Pangkal Pinang, tax office employees held special prayers for seven colleagues killed in the crash, the office head, Krisna Wiryawan, said.<br/>